1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to dynamically populating groups of files and, more particularly, to dynamically populating groups of files in a developer environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Typically, application developers working on a particular project work concurrently on a large number of files, and therefore must also store and keep track of a large number of files. Depending upon the operating system of the application developer environment, application developers have the capability of creating either folders or directories to store source code files that are being generated or tested. Hence, in order to organize the files for a particular project, application developers typically manually create their own directories or folders in order to keep track of each of the files.
Conventionally, software application files have been manually stored in folders by the application developer using an operation such as a drag-and-drop operation. For instance, the application developer may group files according to project. As a result, each of the files may be manually stored in the appropriate folder.
While folders are generally functionally sufficient to enable files to be sorted and grouped, folders are typically grouped hierarchically in order to further sort files in a logical manner. Specifically, in order to sub-divide various groups to generate “sub-groups,” it is often necessary to group the folders hierarchically. Although functionally sufficient, such hierarchical grouping is often complex. In fact, this complex grouping is often counter-intuitive. As a result, a developer who did not generate the hierarchical group of folders would have a difficult time navigating such a system. As a result, finding a desired file is often a difficult and time-consuming process. It follows that testing software applications grouped in such a manner would be a tedious and time-consuming process. In addition, as testing time increases, the costs of testing similarly increase.
Even a developer who was the originator of a file grouping hierarchy may not be able to recall a complex categorization scheme. In addition, it is important to note that during the development process, source code files are typically modified as testing is performed. As a result of these changes, the application developer may wish to re-categorize a particular file. However, file categorization is typically a manual process, as described above. Unfortunately, even if categorization of files has been performed upon creation of the files, this cannot reflect the changes that are continually made to the files. As a result, the developer must continually re-categorize the files, as appropriate. This requires diligence on the part of the application developer, as well as a well thought out folder hierarchy.
Thus, there is a need for improved techniques for categorizing and storing software application files in a software application environment.